A quick summary of impressions from a composer who was in attendance and links to panel highlights…

A look at the 2005 Grant Park Music Festival.

Composer competition decided American Idol style.

A look at the a new collaborative project introduced by the contemporary dance group Danceworks.

Performances of George Crumb’s Black Angels and Phil Kline’s Symphony for 21 iPods ring out from Cleveland’s under-utilized Old Arcade.

A look at the 2005 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

Part of Abington Art Center’s installation of The Lost Meeting, a collaborative project between J. Morgan Puett, spurse (a nebulous collective), Philadelphia-based curator Julie Courtney, and Bang on a Can’s David Lang.

John Adams and Peter Sellars count down to the premiere of Dr. Atomic at a New York press conference.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s popular Art After 5 series hosts local jazz artists all summer long.

First, the good news for composers and friends of contemporary music: the Brandeis University graduate program in composition and theory is alive and well after surviving a proposal for its elimination announced last year. Now, the bad news: small groups of composers poring over the details of this art form evidently seem as obscure and puzzling to the rest of the population as ever, and this can affect “life-or-death” choices at some universities, even at liberal arts schools such as Brandeis…